Baseless allegations the product of 'deliberate and calculated lies' from
Iraqi witnesses and detainees who were driven by a desire to smear British
military

Claims that British troops murdered, mutilated and tortured Iraqi detainees are “wholly and entirely without merit or justification”, a £31 million public inquiry has found.

The baseless allegations were the product of “deliberate and calculated lies” from Iraqi witnesses and detainees who were driven by a desire to smear the British military.

The devastating demolition of the serious allegations came in the 1,250-page findings of the five-year Al-Sweady Inquiry into accusations troops had killed and mistreated Iraqi detainees after a fierce clash in May 2004.

The findings are likely to increase demands for legal reforms to protect combat troops serving abroad from future human rights law cases.

Sir Thayne Forbes, the former High Court judge who chaired the inquiry, said the Iraqis had made claims of the “most serious possible nature”, including accusations of murder, torture, mutilation and degrading treatment.

After hearing from more than 300 witnesses, the inquiry concluded the “vast majority” of allegations, including all the most serious, were “wholly and entirely without merit or justification”.

It said: “Very many of those baseless allegations were the product of deliberate and calculated lies on the part of those who made them and who then gave evidence to this inquiry in order to support and perpetuate them. Other false allegations were the result of inappropriate and reckless speculation on the part of witnesses.”

Witnesses were in some cases driven by “ingrained hostility” to the British.

The exhaustive inquiry catalogued some instances of ill treatment, and said some soldiers had fallen “below the high standards normally expected of the British Army”.

It was critical of the way detainees were blindfolded, strip searched and not given proper meals, but found such ill treatment had often not been deliberate and several procedures had since been changed.

Sir Thayne Forbes, who chaired the Al-Sweady inquiry, says the report clears British troops of the most serious allegations of murder and torture, but did find evidence of "relatively minor" ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees.

The inquiry praised British troops’ conduct during the fighting, saying they had displayed “exemplary courage, resolution and professionalism”.

Military witnesses had been “both truthful and reliable” during the inquiry, but by contrast several Iraqi detainees had been “unprincipled in the extreme and wholly without regard for the truth”.

Sir Thayne said the inquiry had "established beyond doubt" that all the most serious allegations were "wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility"

There were some instances of ill-treatment by the British military, "but these were relatively minor when compared with the original very serious allegations".

He said: "I have also come to the conclusion that the overall approach of the detainees and that of a number of the other Iraqi witnesses to the giving of their evidence, was both unprincipled in the extreme and wholly without regard for the truth."

The inquiry was ordered four years ago to look at accusations of mistreatment after a fierce clash known as the Battle of Danny Boy.

On May 14, 2004, heavily armed Iraqi insurgents ambushed vehicles belonging to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders near a checkpoint called Danny Boy, near the small town of Al Majar al’Kabir.

A fierce battle followed involving the Highlanders and soldiers of the 1st Battalion Princess of Wales’s Regiment and many Iraqis were killed in close quarters combat.

After the fighting, the unusual order was given for bodies to be collected and taken to a nearby military base, Camp Abu Naji, for identification, because it was believed an insurgent responsible for the killing of six Royal Military Policemen a year earlier may be among the dead.

Nine captured Iraqi fighters were also taken away.

The inquiry dismissed claims by the captured men that they were innocent bystanders caught up in the fighting. It found all were either members of volunteers for the Mahdi Army shia militia and claims they were farmers or going shopping were “deliberate lies”.

The British soldiers handed back 20 bodies to their families the following day. The inquiry found all were insurgents and all were killed on the battlefield, not in custody.

Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, called the legal claims a "shameful attempt to use our legal system to attack and falsely impugn our Armed Forces."